"President George W. Bush has likened the "war on terrorism" to the cold war against communism."

I suppose they could both be thought of as wars.

"Addressing military cadets graduating from West Point, Mr Bush reaffirmed at the weekend that the US "will not rest until the promise of liberty reaches every people in every nation"."

Ok, now he's confusing politics with economics, which are not strictly dependent.

"But as the US struggles to assert itself on the international stage, the president's most radical supporters now dismiss this as mere rhetoric, and traditional conservatives are questioning the wisdom of a democratisation strategy that has brought unpleasant consequences in the Middle East."

You guys were warned, both by the "peaceniks", and history.

"Neo-conservative commentators at the American Enterprise Institute wrote last week what amounted to an obituary of the Bush freedom doctrine.

"Bush killed his own doctrine," they said, describing the final blow as the resumption of diplomatic relations with Libya. This betrayal of Libyan democracy activists, they said, came after the US watched Egypt abrogate elections, ignored the collapse of the "Cedar Revolution" in Lebanon, abandoned imprisoned Chinese dissidents and started considering a peace treaty with Stalinist North Korea.

"The neo-conservatives offered no explanation for desertion of the doctrine, other than a desire to make quick but transitory short-term gains. "The president continues to believe his own preaching, but his administration has become incapable of making the hard choices those beliefs require," they wrote."

Profit before principle! How ya likin' it?

"It seems to me better to abandon the label and articulate an altogether distinct foreign policy position," he writes."

Could be, could be. I hope someone is going to listen to a "pinhead academic" (O'Reilly's words) like you.

"Graham Fuller, former diplomat and intelligence officer, suggests the US is suffering from "strategic fatigue" brought on by "imperial over-reach"."

Too bad few in the Bible thumping administration believes in reading history (besides the Bible). They might have stumbled on previous examples.

"The administration's bark is minimised, and much of the bite seems gone," he writes in the Nixon Center's National Interest journal. "Has superpower fatigue set in? Clearly so, to judge by the administration's own dwindling energy and its sober acknowledgment that changing the face of the world is a lot tougher than it had hoped."

It's all so much easier when you're predisposed (but not obligated) to cooperate with other nations. Oops, more lessons of history and diplomacy missed there!

"Short-term economic costs of the empire have been bearable, "

Thanks to the Clinton years. (Ok, not necessarily )

"says Mr Fuller, but long-term indicators show it is not sustainable - massive domestic debt, growing trade imbalances, an extraordinary gap in wealth between rich and poor Americans..."

Uhh, why does that gap matter? You don't sound like much of a conservative to me anymore if you think that matters. I guess you forgot, the rich deserve what they have, and the poor are lazy. Besides, the more wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, they better they can trickle down on all of us!

"More immediately, the unprecedented unilateral character of the US exercise of global power has proved its undoing.

"Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, has tried to redress this in Mr Bush's second term, but key allies - Britain's Tony Blair, for example - are also suffering from weakened credibility."

See my previous comments about history and diplomacy. We should have checked your resume, under "Political Skills".

"In contrast, Russia, which Mr Bush saw as a declining power when he came to office in 2001, is asserting itself on the international stage. So is China.

"Neither wants to declare itself explicitly at odds with the US, but they share a common agenda and ability to stymie Washington's will. This is seen in their policies towards Iran, North Korea, Syria, the new Palestinian government led by Hamas, and Venezuela.

"In the last few years, diverse countries have deployed a multiplicity of strategies and tactics designed to weaken, divert, complicate, limit, delay or block the Bush agenda through a death by a thousand cuts," says Mr Fuller."

Probably be easier to prevent the "thousand cuts" if we had more allies. But hey, if the whole world is against us, they must all be wrong. After all, John Wayne didn't need allies.

"Even some traditional Republicans are challenging the concept that the global "war on terror" is the paramount issue for generations to come.

"Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate's powerful foreign relations committee, suggested that "there are a good many who would feel that the possibilities for devastation of countries, including our own, may come much more from our myopia in terms of energy policy than our ability to track down the last of the al-Qaeda cells".

You mean, like, maybe alternative energy might be a good idea? Now where have we heard that crazy idea before?

"Robert Jervis, professor of international politics at Columbia University, argues in the Washington Quarterly that the US system does not have the commitment to sustain the prolonged efforts required by Mr Bush's "transformationalist" agenda."

That would seem to be a natural problem for very large, hence disunified, democracies that change leadership frequently. Not aware that's been solved even in theory.